


Unwilling Pontifex

by a_la_grecque



Category: Exiles Saga and Galactic Milieu - Julian May
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:36:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_la_grecque/pseuds/a_la_grecque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Remillard brothers clash after Jack finds a unique way to get to know Dorothea MacDonald.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unwilling Pontifex

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Macadamanaity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macadamanaity/gifts).



> I hope this is something like what you wanted! Thanks for giving me the chance to play in this fandom.

Dorothea MacDonald’s first session at Concilium Orb was talked about for years afterwards, not just because of the excitement of another Paramount becoming a Magnate, but because of the actions of a certain other parmount.

Jack Remillard had occasionally chosen to appear at sessions wearing a slightly different body from the one he customarily used. Most of these were pretty uncontroversial, just a little tough to get used to. Some of them, however, were a little bit more scandalous. 

“Tabernaud, Jack, you just can’t do that,” Marc said. 

“Why not?” Jack shrugged. “It’s a body after all.” He adjusted his dark hair to suit his latest whim. 

Marc simply couldn’t get used to it. He’d never been too impressed with Jack’s body swapping stunts when he’d been younger. Well, that wasn’t true, he’d been blown away by the sheer power of his Creativity wattage, but his appreciation had started and ended with metapsychic outlay involved. Like so many other things, dressing up just seemed a little bit frivolous. He indulged in it when the occasion really demanded it (like the occasional masked ball, of course) but for the most part he had shaken his head over Jack’s childish games. 

His little brother’s latest exploits, however, were more than just parlour tricks to entertain the family, they threatened to rock the boat with the Milieu in ways which Marc would prefer not to see happen. The Remillards were on shaky enough ground in some quarters as it was. 

“It’s just not… Why would you even think of doing such a thing?” 

“Curiosity,” Jack said, and his familiar grin asserted itself even through the changed features. “I bet you would if you could.” 

Marc could think of a million or so other things he would do if he was blessed with his brother’s high five paramount powers. Turning himself into a quasi facsimile of some strange girl was not one of them. 

“You know, I really wouldn’t.” 

Jack launched a quick probe at his brother, half jesting half serious. Marc had no problem opening up the outermost layer of his mind, but maintained an impervious screen over his deeper secrets. 

“Ah, true enough,” Jack sighed, “You work so hard to suppress your human urges, after all.” 

“Is that what this is about? Your human urges?” 

Jack stammered out a denial, but his blush gave him away. Marc wondered why he went to such lengths to create these human responses in himself. 

“You know,” said Marc, “That’s really not a good way to deal with it. I mean, I don’t know why you would want to waste your time on women in the first place, since you don’t have the same… biological restraints as the rest of us. If you insist on this foolishness anyway, that’s really not going to get her interested in you. It would be like falling in love with her own sister.” 

“I’m not trying to get her to fall in love with me, or anything like that,” Jack insisted, projecting wide-eyed innocence, perhaps a little too much. “I just want to know more about her, so I thought… maybe if I wear the same kind of body, I don’t know, it would help me understand her a little better or something.” 

He shrugged, and Marc was a little disconcerted by the way his magenta dress rose and slipped off one shoulder. 

“If she won’t let me in, if she won’t trust me… this just seemed like another way to try to get inside her, work out what makes her tick.” 

Marc let out an explosive sigh. “You try so hard to be like the rest of us, but sometimes I really don’t know what you are. Only you would think of something like that, something so…”

“Inhuman?” Jack asked, innocently. 

“Well, no… it is, but it’s not. You’re almost too perfectly human, it’s like you’re free to pursue every aspect of our wildest dreams and yet… sometimes you choose the strangest directions.” 

“What, I should spend all my time hooked into a brain board like you do then, brother mine?” 

“I just, why would you concern yourself with something so _trivial_. You’re free of this fleshly prison with all its stupid needs and urges and desires, and yet you want to devote yourself to understanding them more fully. Aren’t there more important things to do with your time?” 

“I don’t know about that,” Jack said. “Beside, Dorothea MacDonald is anything but trivial. For some unimaginable reason, possibly your own repressed urges, you seem hell bent on describing my interest as some sort of crush. It’s not that, as you know, I’m not subject to the same biochemical whims as you. But I do want to get to know the only person I’ve ever encountered who is the slightest bit similar to me.” 

“Ah, of course.” Marc’s lips twisted into a semblance of a smile. “Your extensive family is just not up to your superior standards.” 

“It’s not that, Marc,” Jack sighed, “It’s not that at all, I just know that you can never understand what it feels like to be me, and, well, she can. Don’t ask me how I know, I can just tell.” 

“Reasoning aside, little brother, wearing her body isn’t going to go down very well. It’s confusing enough having a Paramount Grand Master in all five metafaculties, even more so when he insists on appearing as another Paramount. I thought the human polity were going to explode in a burst of outrage.” 

“It was good, wasn’t it?” Jack said, “The Gi seemed to be rather taken with it though, I thought.” 

“Yes, well, that’s the Gi for you.” 

“I don’t think the lady herself was too impressed though, you’re probably lucky she’s speeding her way back to Caledonia as we speak and not here to berate you in person.” 

Jack looked a little bit shamefaced. “No, you’re right, she wasn’t. It was the first time she’s actually responded to my farspeech though. Just a pity it was a load of good old fashioned Scots expletives.” 

He sighed, and Marc found himself suddenly confronted with a naked brain and a heap of clothes on the floor. 

He’d seen Jack change before, of course, but it never ceased to amaze him, watching his brother’s total and yet casual mastery over the very molecules of the air and the earth, fixing and shaping them to suit his own purposes. In a matter of seconds, his usual form had reappeared. Jack found himself in a bit of a quandary though, the magenta shift he had been wearing would hardly be appropriate to put back on now. 

Marc was always mildly fascinated to see his brother’s body, the way he picked and chose which elements he deemed to be important, the parts he left as simply rudimentary. He wasn’t so sure he agreed with Jack that he didn’t know what it felt like to be him. Or perhaps, he didn’t actually know but he desperately wanted to. And with the new CE rig and the full body component, well, maybe he finally could get to know what it was really like. Then his brother wouldn’t need to mess around with strange girls like Dorothea MacDonald, he’d have his own family to empathise with him. 

But then, perhaps they would be a good pair after all, he couldn’t understand the choices either of them made sometimes. To have such enormous talent and just to waste it on being the dirigent of a backwater ethnic planet that was about to blow all to kingdom come any time soon, it was so damn tectonically unstable, or waste your time on investigating the experiences of the opposite sex. 

Jack disappeared into his closet and re-emerged with a bathrobe wrapped around him. He didn’t normally bother with such things but he had felt the weight of Marc’s scrutiny and didn’t particularly like it. 

“Ti-Jean?” It was a long time since Marc had used Uncle Rogi’s pet name for Jack. “Your body, the one you were wearing earlier, was it any… more advanced to the body that you usually wear. I mean, more developed physically?” Although, how would his brother even really know what physical attributes might be necessary. 

“No,” Jack said, “It was just the basics, really, apart from the hands and the face. Why do you ask?” 

“Because how could you possibly hope to gain that kind of insight when you’re not even wearing a real human body?” 

“Oh Marc,” Jack sighed, “You really don’t get it all, do you? It’s not about what it actually feels like to be inside the body, it’s what you learn about how people treat you. I didn’t need to put in a fully functioning set of ovaries and a uterus to experience a little of that.” 

“But everyone knew who you were, you were still sitting in the same damned Remillard chair, after all. How could that make a difference?" 

“Maybe they did, but… it still made a difference. And besides, no one knew who I was when I was walking down the street in Rive Gauche to buy flowers, or when I stopped by Alpenland looking for you. I even went over to the family homestead before the session this morning and nobody knew it was me. I had a little visit to one of the Poltroyan enclaves too, I think they were most impressed.” 

Marc shook his head, never sure what to make of his little brother with all his mercurial brilliance. 

“I know, I know, you think any sort of experimentation that doesn’t involve cerebroenergetic enhancement or tinkering with DNA isn’t worth doing, but that doesn’t mean that everyone thinks that way.” 

“I’m not that single minded about my work,” Marc said, knowing it for a lie the moment the words left his mouth. 

Jack scoffed, “You’ve been obsessed since before I was born. But I suppose… and this is one of the areas of my life I don’t think you’ll ever understand, Marc, you have so much time left to explore… everything. You can devote all this time to working on your brain boosters because you have so much more time left, you can change your mind and get to all the other stuff later. I don’t have that luxury, I have to be a little more careful about what I pick and choose. And if they’re not the choices that you would make, well, so be it. They are my choices to make, however.” 

Marc wondered when things got so complicated, then remembered that they always had been where Jack was concerned, even before his birth. Heck, even before he was even conceived, there were problems. Oh, to be a Remillard. Despite all their differences, he knew that he and his little brother still had an awful lot in common, and perhaps Ti-Jean had a little way to go in understanding it. 

Uncle Rogi would understand, somehow he always seemed to be able to find a bridge between them. They would have to arrange a little get together when they got back to Earth, perhaps a fishing trip. Of course, knowing the old fart, he might not be willing to help them find their common ground, he always claimed that he didn’t want to get involved in family matters any more, unless his mysterious Lylmik friend insisted.


End file.
